The Daily Astorian | Gazettehttp://www.dailyastorian.com
The Daily AstorianTue, 14 Aug 2018 16:44:47 -0400enhttp://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/staticimage/images/rss-logo.jpgThe Daily Astorian | Gazettehttp://www.dailyastorian.com
Ecola Creek Forest Reserve closed due to fire dangerhttp://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/news/20180814/ecola-creek-forest-reserve-closed-due-to-fire-danger
http://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/news/20180814/ecola-creek-forest-reserve-closed-due-to-fire-danger#CommentsTue, 14 Aug 2018 10:26:51 -0400Cannon Beach Gazettehttp://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180819937The Ecola Creek Forest Reserve has been closed to public entry. Cannon Beach City Manager Bruce St. Denis announced the closure Tuesday morning due to high fire danger. A statement will be released once conditions are safe enough for public entry.

This is a typical time of the year for the forest reserve to close. The city often times closures with when Greenwood Resources, the company who manages neighboring timber properities, closes its lands to recreation.

“They do a lot more forest management than we do, so they are very knowledgeable about assessing this,” St. Denis said, “So we rely on them as a partner.”

The reserve will be reopened when the city deems there has been enough consistent rainfall to reduce fire danger.

]]>Cannon Beach opposed to county lodging tax hikehttp://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/news/20180813/cannon-beach-opposed-to-county-lodging-tax-hike
http://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/news/20180813/cannon-beach-opposed-to-county-lodging-tax-hike#CommentsMon, 13 Aug 2018 14:10:12 -0400Brenna Visser
http://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180819952CANNON BEACH — City councilors voiced their opposition Tuesday to a Clatsop County lodging tax increase to help pay for jail operations, primarily taking issue with the lack of communication the county had with the city before the vote.

Monica Steele, the county’s business and finance director, gave a presentation to the City Council about the new tax, which will impact lodging operators starting in January.

The county tax comes in anticipation of a $20 million bond measure in November to move the Clatsop County Jail from Astoria to the former North Coast Youth Correctional Facility in Warrenton. Annual jail operating costs — $3.4 million this year — are estimated to rise by more than $1.2 million if the jail is relocated.

But city councilors took issue with the fact the county did not approach the city or local lodging operators about the tax increase.

“They should have been talking to us and hotel management before this,” Mayor Sam Steidel said.

Cannon Beach joins dissenters in the lodging industry who have also been critical about not being included in discussions before the tax hike. Lodging operators also have argued the tax would dampen revenue and unfairly targets a single industry.

Proponents believe the 1 percent increase is relatively minimal and would mostly impact visitors from outside the county, who Sheriff Tom Bergin claims make up 27 percent of the inmate population.

City Councilor George Vetter said adding a county tax is another “bureaucratic burden” to hotels and rental companies, which already have to report separate taxes on the city and state level.

Others, like City Councilor Mike Benefield, took issue with the county handing the city restricted tourism promotion dollars it may not necessarily want.

By state law, only 30 percent of the new tax — about $420,000 of the $1.4 million estimated to be brought in annually — can be used for jail operations. The other 70 percent must be used for tourism promotion.

The tourism promotion portion of the revenue collected from businesses within city limits will be returned to cities to use how they see fit, Steele said. The new tax will raise the Cannon Beach lodging tax from 8 to 9 percent and is estimated to raise $380,000 in revenue a quarter for the city.

“I don’t want more promotion. I don’t want more advertising. You can take back (to the county commission) at least one councilor is not at all happy about this,” Benefield told Steele.

If the tax has to stay, Benefield suggested the county work with the state to broaden the definition of a tourism-related facility in state law so the money could support a variety of city functions.

“Have the county support that notion … then I wouldn’t be quite as opposed to you throwing money at us and telling us how to spend it,” he said.

Councilors did discuss a possible appeal of the county’s decision, but was advised against it by City Attorney Ashley Driscoll, who said appealing a tax the county has the right to implement would be “an uphill legal battle.”

Instead, the City Council agreed to send a letter to the county outlining concerns with the tax hike, including a request to repeal it regardless of whether the bond passes.

“We’re not appreciative of the way the (county) went about this,” Steidel said.

Brian Doyle died at 60 in May 2017, only months after he won an Oregon Book Award for his young adult novel “Martin Marten.”

Doyle was a former New Yorker, the son of a newspaperman and a teacher who made his mark in this state and dedicated himself largely to its wonders on the coast and elsewhere.

A former editor of the University of Portland’s Portland Magazine, Doyle was nominated for the Oregon Book Award nine times and finally won in 2016 for “Martin Marten.” As deeply as his characters correlate their lives with his fiction debut, “Mink River,” Doyle affiliated himself with the Oregon Coast, especially the North Coast, promoting and sharing his work at Get Lit at the Beach, the city’s signature literary gathering.

Doyle was an advocate for young people, providing workshops for students in Cannon Beach, Seaside and Astoria.

Watt Childress of Jupiter’s Books called Doyle a “masterful, lyrical writer, with a heart the size of Mount Hood.”

At the same event, Cannon Beach’s internationally renowned novelist Terry Brooks called Doyle “one of the best writers he’s ever read.”

This week, Childress compared Doyle to the singer/songwriter Van Morrison. “Somehow I think of them in tandem. When you mention the lyricism. There’s just so much feeling packed in there. Damn! The good folks just don’t live long enough.”

I chose “Mink River” out of all Doyle’s books, essays and poetry after randomly pulling it off the library shelf.

I was so enthralled I bought a used copy for myself, coincidentally signed by the author “To David.” (David, wherever you are, shame on you for parting with this autographed edition!)

“Mink River” takes you on an inner trail, a serpent’s tail that pulls at the connections in your mind, paints a multilayered canvas and provides raw material for a fellow writer’s toolkit, which is never full enough.

Ottesa Moshfegh, a young writer profiled in The New Yorker in July, wrote: “Writing to me, is more musical than I think it is literary a lot of the time — the way that a voice can sound and the way that it leads the reader in a sort of virtual reality, a journey through its own consciousness.”

Doyle could have easily said the same.

“Don’t think when you write,” Doyle said at Get Lit. “Your head is probably your worst enemy. Just sit down and play. And listen to what needs to be said.”

Writing, he said, is “taking an idea out for a walk.”

In “Mink River,” Doyle doesn’t walk, he runs. The setting is the fictional Oregon Coast town of Neawanaka, a hybrid name like Ursula K. Le Guin’s fictional “Seaview,” another tribute to our shores.

“I have visited the coast very often,” Doyle said in a 2011 interview with the Gazette’s Erin Bernard. “Central and north, and wanted very much to sing and celebrate the hard brave sweet wet wild life there; one of the most delicious comments I have had was from a reader on the coast who said this book is true to life here; that to me was a great honor. I so wanted it to be true fiction, you know?”

For this reader, what strikes me most is the book’s mournful prose.

Deep, drenching sadness that immerses us in not only the rich outdoor lives of coastal Oregonians in the fictional city of Neawanaka, but leads us into an epidermal layer of pain, sadness and loss.

What more can we ask from a writer than to say he has changed the way we look at the world around us?

Doyle reaches more to William Butler Yeats and Dylan Thomas than American authors like John Updike or John Cheever, exquisite interior monologuists both. Perhaps it is the Irish brogue that permeates the characters of the O’Donnell clan, an unforgettable lineage descended from the unforgettable Red Hugh, “a master curser who starts cursing before he even gets out of bed.”

Red Hugh can still get a “good burst” going, Doyle writes, “although he can’t sustain an hour’s worth of snarling invective like he could in the old days.”

Doyle’s fabulous crow, Moses, a full-blown, walking, talking, flying character, possesses the gift of speech, which he puts to good use in aiding and abetting the life and well-being of the residents of Neawanaka. Moses makes “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” look like a pipsqueak.

Even the bears and creatures of the forest are given full throat. Witness the bear and her two cubs as they “trundle in rugged parade order, fascinated by bees and berries.”

Doyle is as plaintive as the ouzels he portrays — festive singing water birds — among the crawdads and water striders. His narration blurs the line between human and animal consciousness to the point where nature itself is communicating, reminding us of the chirping, mewing and mooing around us — the language of animals.

The sentences are long, lingering, reciting lists but never listing, with a cascade of revelations ending with a punch line to the gut.

Childress guided me to another work by Doyle, “Spirited Men: Story, Soul and Substance.” The 2004 collection is notable for its profile of Van Morrison (which will send you scrambling to YouTube for live clips of the great and soulful rocker); contemplations of the alto saxophonist Paul Desmond; and an exploration of the clerical themes of 20th-century novelist Graham Greene.

Doyle, like Greene, was a master of many genres, a literary omnivore, capable of dissecting a wolverine; appreciating and one-upping a quick wit or appraising a pinot noir. Such writers are all too rare in any decade.

Reading his tales of death, loneliness, love and natural magic, I am grateful for the legacy of work he left behind.

“People ask for him,” Childress said. “But not enough. Maybe his name has not risen to the point where people are requesting him as much as he deserves. He’s the kind of person that’s going to be here and stick around, and people are going to come back again and again to read and enjoy.”

R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s South County reporter and editor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon Beach Gazette.

BOX

“Mink River” will be the featured work of Cannon Beach Reads, a program from the Cannon Beach Library on Sept. 19.

James Smejkal, the owner of the 17.6-acre parcel of forestland nestled next to U.S. Highway 101, wanted to build what he called “an upscale RV park,” mostly because it is one of the only types of development allowed with the land’s recreation management zoning.

But as the project moved forward, Smejkal faced logistical challenges like building proper roadways into the park, finding a nearby water source for infrastructure and doing construction without downing trees, Leonard Waggoner, Smejkal’s development consultant, said.

Now, Smejkal is looking to sell.

“Mechanically, it just didn’t fit,” Waggoner said. “We would have had to build 1,000 feet of roadway for 15 or 20 units.”

Smejkal has faced roadblocks to development since he acquired the land in 2002 through a trade with the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. In 2009, Smejkal tried to develop the property as housing, which was ultimately denied by the Clatsop County Planning Commission.

The RV park also encountered vocal local pushback. Arch Cape residents and environmental groups raised concerns in September at a public hearing about adding traffic to an already populated stretch of Highway 101, threats to water quality with sewer infrastructure butting up against nearby streams and the property’s proximity to threatened marbled murrelet habitat.

Although county planners were concerned with the criticism, Waggoner said, community concerns did not sway Smejkal’s decision to sell.

“There were a lot of things not desirable with this land from a development standpoint,” Waggoner said. “It got to be a very elaborate process for a small parcel of land.”

Now that the property is off the table for development, the North Coast Land Conservancy has shown interest in bringing what was once state parkland back into conservation.

Katie Voelke, the land conservancy’s executive director, said in an email that the property has conservation value, including the connection to the state park and beach and a forest with legacy spruce and cedar that provides nesting habitat for the marbled murrelet.

While Waggoner said he has had conversations with the land conservancy, no offer has been made and a price has yet to be set.

The price will be determined by an Oregon Department of Transportation forester who will survey the land for timber value. Waggoner said that if Smejkal can’t find a buyer, they will start the process to rezone the land to allow harvesting the timber.

“If an environmental group wants it, we see that as the best use,” Waggoner said.

Two years ago, Colette Peters, the department’s director, signed a memorandum of understanding with Disability Rights Oregon to increase out-of-cell time for these inmates and make other improvements. Peters agreed to give inmates at least 20 hours per week, or less than three hours per day, outside their cells by 2020.

“I believe this building and our great staff work is going to get us there in no time,” Peters said during a ribbon-cutting at the treatment center on Friday.

In July and early August, the agency provided about 12.6 hours per week, or about 1.8 hours a day, Peters said. Inmates remain in windowless cells measured 6 feet by 11 feet with no companionship for the rest of the day. Disability Rights Oregon has alleged those conditions are on par with solitary confinement.

Twenty hours a week is the minimum needed to protect inmates with mental health conditions from cruel and unusual punishment as defined by the Eighth Amendment, according to Disability Rights Oregon.

Joel Greenberg, attorney at Disability Rights Oregon, said he is “skeptically optimistic” that the agency will meet its obligation.

“We hope this building — which they have placed a lot of faith in and a lot of hope in — will turn around the numbers,” Greenberg said.

State lawmakers appropriated $5.2 million in February 2016 to build, furnish and staff the treatment center for some 45 inmates who have serious mental illness and have demonstrated violent or disruptive behavior.

The metal mesh doors in the inmates’ living quarters and the configuration of the prison prevent exposure to natural light and make it difficult for inmates to communicate with anyone outside.

“Talking to someone through punched-out metal holes doesn’t allow you to adequately see or hear anything,” Greenberg said. “In order to talk to someone inside a cell, you would have to bend down and talk through the food slot and hopefully the resident of the cell would do the same thing. Even though the residents are very disabled and ill, there is a lot of noise, yelling and screaming that made it difficult to have not only a private conversation but any conversation.”

Now, inmates can meet privately with mental health professionals in one of 13 offices at the treatment center. The 6,830-square-foot center also has four classrooms for group therapy with six desks where inmates can be secured, two physicians’ offices and one counselor office.

The space will allow the Department of Corrections to convene nine classes per week Monday through Friday for mentally﻿ ill inmates in the Behavioral Health Unit, which will increase the time outside of cells, said Capt. Toby Tooley. The center offers windows, natural light and soothing turquoise-hued walls to help enhance inmates’ mood.

In the past three years, the Department of Corrections has expanded the types of therapy offered to inmates from one kind to 19 varieties, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, positive psychology and art therapy, said Gabe Gitnes, an assistant administrator at the department’s behavioral health services.

The department has also made progress in decreasing use of force and other metrics that contribute to living conditions.

“The living units are problematic, but they are not the entire program,” Greenberg said. “The department has been trying to change culture and has increased staff-to-resident ratio, and we share their hope things will be better and things are better than when we first started working on this.”

The Capital Bureau is a collaboration between EO Media Group and Pamplin Media Group.

In July, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it would repeal an Obama administration 2014 rule that allowed states to deduct fees for “benefits customary to employees,” including union dues, directly from health workers’ pay.

CMS says the 2014 change is not consistent with the Social Security Act, which the federal agency says “generally prohibits states from making payments for Medicaid services to anyone but the provider.”

“The law provides that Medicaid providers must be paid directly and cannot have part of their payments diverted to third parties outside of a few very specific exceptions,” Tim Hill, the acting director for the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, said in a July 10 press release. “This proposed rule is intended to ensure that providers receive their complete payment, and any circumstances in which a state does divert part of a provider’s payment must be clearly allowed under the law.”

Under the rule, home care workers who become members would be responsible for forwarding dues payments to the union.

But Friday Oregon’s senators and four of its representatives urged CMS to withdraw the proposed rule in a letter to CMS Administrator Seema Verma.

“Prohibiting voluntary payroll deductions for customary benefits like union dues would place an unnecessary burden on independent home care workers,” they wrote. “We are concerned that the proposed rule would interfere with and compromise the ability of workers to join together to form unions and collectively bargain for higher wages, better working conditions, expanded benefits, and new training opportunities to improve the quality of care they provide to Medicaid beneficiaries.”

There are more than 28,000 home care workers who serve Medicaid beneficiaries in Oregon, the lawmakers say. About 20,000 of them are part of SEIU Local 503.

Home care workers have been permitted to unionize in Oregon since 2000, when Oregon voters approved Ballot Measure 99. SEIU represents all Medicaid-funded Oregon home care workers who choose to be union members.

That measure established a home health care commission for elderly and disabled people receiving publicly-funded care at home. Supporters say the change lead to better pay, benefits and training for the state’s home health workers.

Joy’e Willman, of Portland, has been a home care worker and personal support worker for 26 years. She is vice president of Homecare Local 99.

“I can tell you that before we had a union at all, we didn’t have anything,” Willman said in a phone interview arranged by SEIU Friday. “We didn’t have workers’ comp, we didn’t have paid time off, we didn’t have health care.”

The tariffs are slated to go into effect Aug. 23, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc., a Washington D.C.-based national trade group.

“ISRI regrets that the trade dispute between the United States and China continues to escalate without any indication that the two governments will be negotiating an agreement on trade,” the trade group relayed in a press statement. “There is no doubt that these tariffs will impair the already diminishing scrap exports from the United States to China.”

Such tariffs will not be levied on other countries that export scrap recyclables to China, the trade group noted, but it’s unclear if those nations can fulfill all of the demand in China.

The domestic recycling industry is already reeling from new Chinese purity standards for accepting recycled paper and plastic. As a result, bales of recycled paper and plastic are now sitting idle in Oregon warehouses or being buried in landfills.

Scrap recyclables exported to China are a big business.

In the first six months of 2018, total scrap exports from the U.S. to China were valued at $2.2 billion, the trade group reported. That’s a 24 percent drop from the same period in 2017, due to the new purity standards.

In all of 2017, the U.S. exported $5.6 billion worth of scrap commodities to China.

]]>From steel imports to Subarus, Trump&#x2019;s tariff war hits region
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180810/from-steel-imports-to-subarus-trumps-tariff-war-hits-region
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180810/from-steel-imports-to-subarus-trumps-tariff-war-hits-region#CommentsFri, 10 Aug 2018 12:56:08 -0400 Molly SolomonOregon Public Broadcastinghttp://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180819975VANCOUVER, Wash. — For many at the Port of Vancouver, the impacts of President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war are already here.

That’s the message U.S. Sen. Patty Murray heard from longshoremen and port officials during a visit this week to southwest Washington.

“States like ours are the most trade-dependent states in the nation. We have people whose job depends on this. From the longshoremen to the apple growers: the impact is broad,” said Murray, a Democrat who spoke with farmers in eastern Washington about the proposed tariffs earlier in the week. “The impact on our economy could be very quick and it could be very tough.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates nearly a million jobs in Washington state are supported by trade and could be at risk.

Port workers said they’re already seeing less steel on the docks and have seen orders canceled because of new tariffs. The Port of Vancouver is the second largest importer of steel on the West Coast and it makes up a good chunk of their business.

“Usually this yard is filled with steel, and I’m not seeing that,” said Cager Clabaugh, president of the ILWU Local 4 in Vancouver.

Earlier in the morning, Clabaugh said he got a call about a problem at the port’s copper facility. Six-thousand tons of copper ore were set to be loaded onto a ship bound for China. But a new round of proposed tariffs from China included a 25 percent tariff on copper imports. The ship set to pick up the copper canceled its order and turned back around.

“These mountains of copper ore are going nowhere now,” Clabaugh said.

When orders get canceled, it’s not only a loss of revenue for the port, it’s also a loss of a job for the people that load and unload the trains, trucks and ships that travel along the Columbia River.

Some longshoremen say they’re cutting back on expenses or are eating out less to save money in case work at the docks slows down.

“One of the biggest concerns is how it’s going to affect my family, our housing, our benefits,” said longshoreman Amber Nelson. “If we lose our standard of living, my family will suffer in ways we have not had to deal with before.”

Former ILWU Local 4 President Jared Smith recently returned to work at the port after recovering from shoulder surgery over the last six months. He said he has to work a certain number of hours to keep his health coverage. If steel work slows down, he worries his benefits could be in jeopardy.

“Our bodies take a hit down here,” Nelson added, saying work at the port is physically intensive. “We need that insurance. We need those things to keep doing what we do.”

On the other end of the port, hundreds of brand new Subaru cars were being driven onto the loading dock. About a quarter of the nation’s Subaru fleet are unloaded at the Port of Vancouver. But a new set of auto tariffs is making port leaders uneasy.

Port of Vancouver CEO Julianna Marler said they’re monitoring a U.S. Department of Commerce investigation into Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, on whether auto imports are a threat to national security. It could lead to a 25 percent tariff on imported cars, and would have a huge impact on Subaru, one of the port’s biggest clients. Marler suspects if the tariff goes into effect, the price would likely get passed on to consumers.

“It’ll either be very expensive or it won’t get done,” Marler explained. “If a manufacturer can’t keep up with the costs, they’ll reduce their labor force and it’ll just be a ripple effect with other indirect jobs.”

Marler said the uncertainty surrounding the trade climate is also affecting future clients at the port.

Earlier this year, Marler and her staff traveled to Asia for a marketing trip. She said many potential business partners were wary of doing business during a possible trade war. She also said that the port has been slow to find a client for a parcel at the port called Terminal 5. The 100-acre plot of land was most recently the proposed site for the failed Vancouver Energy oil terminal project.

“There is a reluctance to make investment in new business because they just don’t know what the climate is going to be like,” she said.

Marler and others at the port worry that the tension around tariffs could lead customers to go elsewhere for products.

“Once you lose business, if they go to another country and are able to start getting a stable supply, it’s hard to get that business back,” Marler said. “And that’s very concerning for the port.”

3 p.m., Northwest By Northwest Gallery, 232 Spruce St., Cannon Beach, 503-436-0741. The gallery is featuring the work of oil painter Hazel Schlesinger, who will be in attendance and demonstrating painting en plein air.

]]>No place like homehttp://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/opinions/20180809/no-place-like-home
http://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/opinions/20180809/no-place-like-home#CommentsWed, 8 Aug 2018 15:29:27 -0400 Eve Marx Cannon Beach Gazettehttp://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809826Last week, shortly after we returned from a brief trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, we drove to our favorite beach access in Tolovana Park to walk along the strand. The walk wasn’t planned. I was carrying my handbag, something I ordinarily don’t like to do on a beach walk. The original idea was to grab a coffee at Sea Level and maybe hit Fresh Foods before going home to laundry and tidying up the garden. It’s shocking how you can be gone just a few days and come home to a ton of weeds. Perhaps it was the wish to postpone weeding and laundry folding that prompted my suggestion we walk to Haystack Rock.

It had been hot in Santa Fe. They were experiencing a heat wave. While I anticipated it to be warm, I thought we might be able do a bit more exploring on foot beyond the historic plaza, but it was too hot to walk. In the morning we hoofed it a few blocks to Iconik Coffee Roasters on Galisteo Street (they have two other locations, one on Guadalupe and another on Lena Street) before wandering in and out of shops. In the afternoons we made our way to La Casa Sena for a Marble Brewery beer (that’s an Albuquerque brewer) and split a BLTA sandwich — red chile honey bacon, green leaf lettuce, tomato, avocado and chile aioli on a toasted buttermilk sourdough bun. Then it was back to the hotel pool to chill out until dinner. One afternoon we hit Ten Thousand Waves, a beautiful and serene Japanese spa, where we lounged in our private hot tub replete with sauna and plunge pool, but my original intention to hike a bit or ride a horse was out of the question given the 90-degree temps.

It was cool in Cannon Beach, cool enough for a jacket. The shoreline was enveloped in thick fog. Walking north, towards Haystack Rock, we passed a few people; some rode balloon tire bikes; some pushed their old or tiny dogs in canine strollers; a 70-something couple were holding hands. I could not help but notice I was the only person barefoot. (I carried my Minnetonka moccasins in my hand.) I’m a person who likes to feel the sand on her soles and between her toes. To me, that’s what the beach is for.

The Rock was surprisingly unpeopled. Perhaps it was the early hour. I posted a picture on Facebook and a Gearhart friend asked if it was Photoshopped. It was not. We stood beside it for a few minutes, thinking our private thoughts. The roar of the surf discouraged conversation. Turning back toward Tolovana Park, the fog was so thick you couldn’t see five feet in front of you. I liked that.

I enjoyed Santa Fe and really appreciated the food seeing how the North Coast is a little short on New Mexican. At a divine little place in Santa Fe on Hickox Street, Mr. Sax had a flat iron steak with grilled green chiles, pico de gallo, guacamole and fresh whole pintos. I had a soft shell crab sandwich minus the bun with a salad of mixed greens, roasted beets, peaches, and chevre. In a perfect world, I could dine in Santa Fe, followed up by a dusk stroll on Cannon Beach, splashing my feet in sea water as chilly as that spa’s plunge pool.

]]>The dynamics of tideshttp://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/guide/20180809/the-dynamics-of-tides
http://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/guide/20180809/the-dynamics-of-tides#CommentsWed, 8 Aug 2018 15:29:09 -0400Rebecca Herren
http://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809827When Jonathan White and a group of passengers were stranded by a 16-foot tide on a mud flat near Sitka, Alaska, White was able to get the tide out of the boat, but not out of his head. He wanted to know why and how this happened. To find the answers, White needed to understand the dynamics of tides, so he set out on a near 20-year journey.

“I thought I would find my answers in a couple of books, but tides are really complicated,” White said. Ten years and 300 publications later, White admitted, “the more I read, the more complex, mysterious, fascinating and poetic tides became.”

White spoke in front of an attentive audience on July 13 at Beach Books to discuss his journey on tide study: how tides travel, their influences, their effect on rising sea levels and what they portend for the future.

His new book, “Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean” is a mix of science, history and ocean lore. White’s journey took him from the canals of Venice, Italy and France to Canada’s Bay of Fundy and Ungava Bay near the Arctic Circle. It also includes stories about the human side of tides.

In his readings, White noticed the lack of any human stories. “There’s a relationship people have with the tides over many thousands of years. I wanted to bring those two stories together: the deep spiritual, human story and the science story.”

“Most of human history before 1700 believed the Earth was the center of the universe, that it didn’t move,” White said.

It wasn’t until Newton’s planetary motion discovery that humans became aware of tides.

Because people didn’t understand the reasons behind the ebb and flow of tides, they speculated, creating a rich mythological history. Some believed when the tide went out, it disappeared into a web of vents below the ocean and came out through another vent. Leonardo da Vinci believed it was the six-hour inhale and six-hour exhale breathing of a large animal, and some astrologers thought it was divine power, citing women’s menstrual cycles.

“There are a lot of different ideas about this, but the science didn’t even begin until about 300 years ago,” he said.

He explained how a crest takes 12 hours to form from high tide to high tide and low tide to low tide. “The tide is a long, low wave that travels around the globe at 450 miles. It has no beginning and no end.”

Then there is tide friction. “Any dimple of tension, any thread of stress you see on the ocean’s surface is evidence of friction,” he said. “The tides rub against the ocean floor and create heat and some of that is dissipated into the water, but most of it is transferred into energy that acts as a break on the ocean’s surface.”

Known as a global phenomenon, this friction also slows down the rotation of the Earth, acts as a torque on the moon’s rotation and throws it away from the Earth, and functions as an accelerator for longer days.

White’s journey began after he graduated from Lewis and Clark College. He built a 600-foot sloop and sailed it through the Caribbean, Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In the early 1980s, he wanted to start a graduate program and saw a picture of an old wooden schooner. He said he “felt a crush coming on” and got into his Volkswagen bug and drove to Tillamook.

It was a cold, rainy day and the boat was in the mud.

“We went down below and I could smell rotting wood. It was painted orange, it leaked about 150 gallons a day and it was perfect,” White said.

He started a nonprofit organization on the boat named Crusade, and for the next 11 years offered floating seminars on the 65-foot halibut schooner built in 1923.

His first seminar seemed to capture the essence, setting the tone for the next few years. “I invited a theater group from Chicago to perform a play.” He anchored the boat in a bay, set up a do-it-yourself amphitheater for the passengers and the play was performed on board the Crusade.

From 1983 to the mid-1990s, these floating seminars kept White out at sea for about seven months of the year, sailing the Inland Passage from Puget Sound to Alaska. His seminars attracted a mix of disciplines: scientists, environmentalists, conservationists, anthropologists, theologians, ecologists and writers including Ursula K. Le Guin.

]]>A return of distinctive butterflieshttp://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/news/20180809/a-return-of-distinctive-butterflies
http://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/news/20180809/a-return-of-distinctive-butterflies#CommentsThu, 9 Aug 2018 09:46:38 -0400Katie Frankowicz
http://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809802Rare butterfly caterpillars are back on the slopes of Saddle Mountain for the first time since they completely disappeared from the area years before.

Government and private partners released 500 Oregon silverspot caterpillars on the mountain’s rocky meadow slopes recently as part of an ongoing effort to rebuild the threatened butterfly’s population at key sites.

“It was a culmination of so much work and it was almost a celebration,” said Trevor Taylor, manager for the reintroduction project at the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.

Last year, teams reintroduced caterpillars at the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge in southern Tillamook County with plans to release caterpillars at Saddle Mountain this year — a site Taylor describes as “prime real estate” for the red-orange butterflies marked with distinctive silver spots.

Elsewhere, the small butterfly’s decline has been linked to a decline in habitat but its disappearance from Saddle Mountain is more mysterious. There are several theories for the decline: past chemical spraying practices on surrounding timberland may have impacted the butterflies, or perhaps the butterflies were unable to weather especially rough winters. People who searched for silverspots on the mountain in the 1970s saw them; when people went looking again in the early 2000s, they were gone.

“We don’t know when the silverspots disappeared, we don’t know why they disappeared,” said Mike Patterson, a contractor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the reintroduction project. “We can only speculate about why they disappeared and that’s speculation — there’s no way to prove it.”

Saddle Mountain remains one of the few sites where the Oregon silverspot’s main source of food — another rare organism, the early blue violet — blooms in abundance. Other wildflowers also flourish there. The variety of blooms make the mountain a popular destination for hikers. For the butterflies, these flowers will provide additional sources of nectar, Taylor said.

Over the summer, many of the silverspots will die. Some will be eaten before they pupate, others will be eaten while they pupate or when they emerge as butterflies.

At the Nestucca site, Patterson could account for only 9 percent of the nearly 1,000 caterpillars released along his survey route. It was a number that concerned others involved, but not Patterson.

“Being able to account for only 9 percent doesn’t mean only 9 percent became butterflies,” he said.

And he feels confident about the caterpillars’ success on Saddle Mountain.

“My guess is we’ll see butterflies,” he said. “The habitat is certainly ripe for them up there.”

Of the 500 caterpillars now chomping away at plants on Saddle Mountain, 280 larvae came from the Oregon Zoo’s butterfly conservation program, which raises as many as 10,000 Oregon silverspot and Taylor’s checkerspots in its lab at any given time to supplement wild populations. Larvae also come from labs at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, the children of wild female silverspots collected from Mount Hebo in the Siuslaw National Forest in Tillamook County.

“Numbers are dictated year to year by (the Fish and Wildlife Service) but it is highly likely we will continue to operate at or near capacity over the next several seasons at least,” said Travis Koons, who oversees the Oregon Zoo’s butterfly conservation program. “We will continue to release high numbers of larvae at the various sites.”

The silverspot caterpillars were placed on early blue violets in three different areas on Saddle Mountain. Over the next few weeks and throughout the summer, Patterson and others will check different survey points, counting any adults they see. Though Patterson is confident this first reintroduction will find some degree of success, he said, “At the same, it’s not a one-time quick fix kind of deal. This is just the first of probably quite a few efforts to go up there and release more caterpillars.”

]]>Gorsuch duo creates fun, meaning with fabric, art at exhibithttp://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/guide/20180809/gorsuch-duo-creates-fun-meaning-with-fabric-art-at-exhibit
http://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/guide/20180809/gorsuch-duo-creates-fun-meaning-with-fabric-art-at-exhibit#CommentsThu, 9 Aug 2018 09:44:28 -0400Nancy McCarthy
http://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809803Before 2010, Bonny Gorsuch had never created a garment. But that year, she won a grant from the Cannon Beach Arts Association to create 24 outfits for 12 models.

“It was something I wanted to challenge myself with,” Gorsuch recalled. “I was very rough and tumble about it. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to sew, and I didn’t know how to construct garments.”

She literally pieced thousands of recycled fabric scraps together, sewing many onto existing garments or creating clothing from scratch. Words, patterns and drawings on the materials illustrated newspaper stories she had collected.

Her latest exhibit, which also includes paintings by her husband, Richard Gorsuch, is at the Cannon Beach History Center & Museum through September.

“I got a little taste of it and realized I really liked creating these garments,” Bonny recalled about her earlier fashion show.

She took her first adult sewing class only last year, but, she admitted, “I still don’t know how to put in a zipper or button holes.”

“I don’t like following patterns; I just want to be random and free-form … Each (garment) is totally one of a kind.”

The works in the show, called Random Sampling: Fabric, Wood, Metal, demonstrate how Bonny takes odd fabric pieces and transforms them into collages, smocks, skirts or shirts that say something, either literally or figuratively.

The smock she wore recently said “I wish.” The background behind the words showed a fish, and underneath the words, Bonny sewed a fabric gull, sun, girl with balloons and butterfly.

“Originally, the words on the fabric were ‘I fish,’ but I put a ‘w’ where the ‘f’ was,” Bonny said.

“I just take a bunch of weirdo stuff and I just cut it apart. I never use brand-new or in perfect condition. I just use stuff that’s discarded in one way or the other.”

“Fabric is her passion,” Richard said. “She just loves fabric. She’s got a flow of really quality fabrics, a lot of tasteful things from different generations.”

Colorful materials are stuffed into 20 cubbyholes in a floor-to-ceiling shelf, as well as drawers and baskets in her studio that has gobbled up the living room in their sunny Cannon Beach home. They are given to her by friends and shopkeepers who collect scraps.

Along with her fabric collages and garments in the history center exhibit are three collages composed of wood and metal. Selected recently as an artist in residence for the Coastal Oregon Artist Residency, Bonny embarked on a project called “Junk Elevated,” where she used materials scavenged from the local transfer station. The residency program was sponsored by Astoria Visual Arts and Recology Western Oregon. Her 15 collages were shown at Vintage Hardware in Astoria.

While Bonny works upstairs in her home studio six days a week, Richard paints in his downstairs studio.

A retired illustrator and designer, Richard spent every day throughout 2002 painting 365 scenes of Haystack Rock. They captured national attention from “Good Morning America” and The New York Times. A few of those paintings, as well as other Cannon Beach locations, are included in the history center show.

“Painting and drawing is really my purpose in life,” he said. “I’m totally at peace. I’m happy, I’m content, I’m right in the spot I’m supposed to be in.”

When he and Bonny moved to the coast from Eugene in 1999, he became intrigued with the small community. He sought to capture the “spirit of Cannon Beach” in his paintings of village life.

“The feel of a small town community – no matter how long I live, I think I will always find plenty to paint. Cannon Beach is a source of inspiration,” he said.

Like Richard’s paintings, which evoke an appreciation of a place, Bonny’s fabric art also delivers a message. A visitor to the history center recently bought a collage with Jack London’s book title, “Call of the Wild.” She wrote to Bonny, telling her the piece came at the right time in her life.

“It says something to them,” Richard noted. “The material is beautiful, the clothes are put together, but what they say … the words strike something in people’s lives.”

3:40 a.m., Avenue G: Police assist Seaside police in locating an assault suspect in the area north and south of the Turnaround. Suspect located; Cannon Beach stand by as suspect is interviewed and arrested.

6:57 p.m., Cakes by Jae’s: Police respond to a report of a couple arguing. Police are unable to locate at first, the couple are then identified (still arguing) and are warned of disorderly conduct.

10:26 p.m., Spruce Drive: Police assist Seaside police with a male subject believed to have damaged two vehicles at the Creekside apartment complex. A male was arrested and transported to Providence hospital.

6:31 p.m., City Park: A man with a broken leg is transported to Providence Hospital by Medics.

7:36 p.m., Highway 101: A woman having a heart attack is transported to Providence Hospital by Medics.

8:11 p.m., Tolovana Park: An elderly man reported lost is located and returned to family members.

July 26

Eight incidents of overnight camping are reported.

1:21 a.m., N. Hemlock: An elderly male reported missing is located.

3:26 p.m. N. Hemlock: A store owner reports shoes stolen on two different occasions. Store owner says they do not have security cameras; does not wish an investigation; wants thefts documented.

4:05 p.m., Police headquarters: Someone reports a lost diamond ring.

July 27

Two incidents of overnight camping are reported.

12:30 p.m., Elk Creek Road parking lot: A vehicle last seen in in January or February of this year was reported stolen. Records show the vehicle was sold in February and then reported stolen a month later. Vehicle was originally reported stolen in March 2018.

10:57 p.m., Gulcana: An intoxicated male is given a courtesy ride back to his hotel.

August 2

Four incidents of overnight camping reported.

5:06 p.m., RV Park Resort: Police respond to a report of an altercation between a male and a female. Both parties were reported to be heavily intoxicated. Officers were unable to contact the parties involved.

6:45 p.m., RV Park Resort: Officers located the described parties from an earlier altercation who were had also been reported early for intoxicated motorcycle driving. Both were warned their behavior could lead to an arrest.

]]>Visitor volume dips on the Oregon Coast
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180809/visitor-volume-dips-on-the-oregon-coast
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180809/visitor-volume-dips-on-the-oregon-coast#CommentsThu, 9 Aug 2018 08:17:56 -0400Brenna Visser
http://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809818At the height of summer, it is easy to believe every Oregonian has found their way to the Oregon Coast.

But while figures from the 2018 Oregon Travel Impact report show tourism spending has increased, the number of visitors staying in hotels and rentals dipped slightly on the Oregon Coast, dropping about 1.3 percent between 2016 and 2017. The decline on the North Coast was 1.7 percent.

The pattern contrasts with the state overall, where visitor volume increased by 2.2 percent, according to the study by Dean Runyan Associates.

Flattening visitor volume should not be seen as an issue for the tourism industry, said Leon Aliski, the company’s project manager. Total destination spending grew 2.2 percent to nearly $2 billion on the Oregon Coast in 2017. On the North Coast alone, visitor spending on accommodations increased from $190 million to $197 million in one year.

Many local lodging operators have yet to feel any impacts from fewer visitors, with many reporting 2017 as an exceptional year.

So how does spending continue to grow when the number of people booking rooms is stagnant?

Aliski said it indicates higher room rates and more expensive transportation costs. In the last year, room rates increased by 4.4 percent.

“If they are spending more because a room costs more and gas costs more, and maybe they are spending more on restaurants, then you can have more spending without actually having more people there,” Aliski said.

Ideally, the industry would seek higher occupancy and growth in room rates simultaneously, Aliski said, but seasonal dips on the coast make this a challenge. With high demand, it is often easier to increase room rates during the peak season than to entice visitors to travel during the off-season when occupancy rates are lower — even with lower room rates, he said.

Higher rates for hotel rooms could be having a discouraging effect for some visitors, said Marcus Hinz, of the Oregon Coast Visitors Association. But part of the stagnation may just be a sign new lodging is not being built to match growth, with many small towns, like Cannon Beach, already built out.

“When you look at the coast’s rate compared with the rate of growth in Portland, one might think we’re not doing well,” Hinz said. “But Portland is building new hotels left and right; they have more rooms online to be booked, which would add to a rate of growth. On the Oregon Coast, I can only name one new property to come online in the last year.”

Hinz also noted that day-trippers contribute to general tourism growth but are not accounted for when looking at room nights.

Linea Gagliano, communications director for Travel Oregon, said the dynamic could also point to a different type of traveler. The growth in spending suggests the visitors who are here are destination travelers, who often travel in large groups, for longer periods of time and spend more on accommodations and local businesses during their stays. The coast has also seen international visitors increase by 5.9 percent in recent years — another group which tends to stay longer and spend more.

“What matters to us is that businesses are getting visitor spending, and we are seeing that,” Gagliano said.

Whatever the factors may be, the numbers could be pointing to the region reaching a certain capacity during peak summer months, Aliski said.

“If they are running at a high occupancy at peak season, then the opportunity for growth is not going to be during the time period when most people are choosing to be (on the Oregon Coast),” Aliski said. “There’s plenty of capacity to grow the industry, but maybe just not in the peak time of the year.”

This view is in line with efforts already in motion by Travel Oregon and the Oregon Coast Visitors Association to focus marketing dollars on encouraging travelers to visit – and pay for a room – in the off-season.

“Any substantial growth is going to come from the off-season,” Hinz said.

]]>Oregon ranks first for homeless youth
http://www.dailyastorian.com/da/capital-bureau/20180808/oregon-ranks-first-for-homeless-youth
http://www.dailyastorian.com/da/capital-bureau/20180808/oregon-ranks-first-for-homeless-youth#CommentsWed, 8 Aug 2018 20:22:54 -0400 PARIS ACHENCapital Bureauhttp://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809822SALEM — Oregon ranks first in the nation for the rate of homeless children and youth and 10th in the percentage of foster care placements, according to a new report by WalletHub.

Overall, Oregon ranked 12th in the ratio of disadvantaged, or “underprivileged” children, compared with Washington state, which ranked 26th, and California, which was 22nd.

The report compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 24 child welfare metrics using statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and other sources.

Metrics included the percentage of children living in poverty, the rate of child food insecurity, the state’s share of children who have been reported abused and other factors.

In Oregon, the rate of homeless children and foster care placements have some correlation.

The state’s number of homeless students was at a record high in 2016-17 at 22,541, according to the most recent state count. That was a 5.6 percent jump from 2015-16.

Meanwhile, inadequate housing is the third biggest driver of foster care placements, according to statistics from the Oregon Department of Human Services. The percentage of foster care placements due to inadequate housing has increased from 13 percent in 2015 to 17 percent in 2017.

“Oregon’s families need support to stay safely together, and the governor is working to bring more housing under development in the state pipeline as well as focusing on root causes that drive children into foster care, such as addiction treatment and recovery, access to comprehensive health care and domestic violence,” said Kate Kondayen, a governor’s spokeswoman. “The governor is also supporting the Department of Human Services child welfare division as they work on right-sizing the foster care system.”

Some advocates believe mandatory relocation assistance for evicted tenants and rent control policies amid a boom in statewide population and demand for housing could help curb the trend.

“Without statewide tenant protections in Oregon, people are facing displacement, causing their families to either be ripped apart or live on the streets,” said Alison McIntosh, of the Oregon Housing Alliance. “Protecting these children should be the first priority” during the state legislative session in January, she said.

A recent state audit shows the Oregon Child Welfare Office is still plagued with no centralized system for reporting child abuse, high caseworker turnover and a lack of follow-through on recommendations from previous routine audits.

The office has a shortage of foster parents with no plan to augment the number, according to the audit.

WalletHub, a Washington, D.C.-based personal finance website, produces a variety of city and state rankings, as well as reviews of credit cards. The company has released reports ranging from the best credit cards with travel insurance to the best and worst cities for singles to live.

WalletHub released the report on children in poverty in August to commemorate Child Support Awareness Month.

The United States has the seventh highest child poverty rate among 41 economically-developed countries in the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

The Capital Bureau is a collaboration between EO Media Group and Pamplin Media Group.

]]>Connect with the world from Cannon Beachhttp://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/opinions/20180808/connect-with-the-world-from-cannon-beach
http://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/opinions/20180808/connect-with-the-world-from-cannon-beach#CommentsWed, 8 Aug 2018 15:22:57 -0400 Joseph BerntCannon Beach Gazettehttp://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809829Recent columns touted volunteers, book sales and other events at the Cannon Beach Library. It’s time to emphasize the library’s primary mission—meeting the reading interests of community residents and visitors, what volunteers and fundraising make possible.

One library member plays a pivotal role in acquiring new titles. Every month Marjorie MacQueen scans bestseller lists, major library purchases, and book reviews to identify about 20 new books for the library.

This past month MacQueen added precisely 20 books, including 15 fictional books (seven mysteries and eight popular novels) but only five nonfictional titles. Authors and titles for all 20 titles are accessible under at http://cannonbeachlibrary.org/new-book-purchases/

MacQueen notes that patrons favor fiction over nonfiction to explain the imbalance between fictional and nonfictional titles. As a reader of four nonfiction titles for every novel cracked, this columnist periodically will devote columns to highlighting nonfictional titles available in the Cannon Beach Library or through its interlibrary loan service. Nonfiction purchases can only increase if patrons check out titles already available. To that end, I recommend two nonfiction books now available at the library.

“The Glass Castle,” a memoir by Jeannette Walls, opens with Walls, age three, catching fire while boiling hot dogs. The fire brings a lengthy hospital stay and lasting scars. From that initial scene, Walls details the poverty, insecurity, hunger and embarrassment of life in a dysfunctional, nomadic family that travels throughout the American Southwest before landing in a three-room hovel without plumbing or regular electricity in a holler in Welch, West Virginia, a down-on-its-heels coal town where her alcoholic father grew up. In seventh grade at Welch High School, Wells attracted the attention of an English teacher and newspaper adviser. She joined the newspaper staff as a proofreader, becoming editor as a junior who wrote most articles the paper published.

Recognizing Welch offered few prospects, Walls and two siblings planned an escape to New York. Lori, her older sister, would leave after graduation; Walls after her junior year; and her brother Brian later. The three pooled money from part-time jobs for the trip, only to discover after a year that their father stole their savings for booze. They began another fund for Lori’s start in New York.

Eventually they reached New York and found jobs. Walls finished high school and entered Barnard College with scholarships, grants and a job answering Wall Street telephones until she received an internship at “The (Brooklyn) Phoenix.” That experience led to work as a gossip columnist for New York Magazine, Esquire and MSNBC.com and to marriage and an apartment on Park Avenue. Her parents, always spoilers, followed their children to New York, living on the streets for three years before squatting in an abandoned building.

This beautifully written memoir describes why and how seriously homelessness affects families in contemporary America, and especially why Walls both hates and loves her brilliant, crazy parents. Anyone who begins this description of abject poverty and where determination and education took Walls may choke back tears but will read to the very last page.

Published in 2005, “The Glass Castle” has sold nearly three million copies, remains on the “New York Times” bestseller list, became a hit movie in 2017, was translated into 22 languages and won major book awards. Walls has also published “Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip” and two novels, “The Silver Star” and “Half Broke Horses.”

“Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” is recommended for those trying to follow the intricacies, turns and twists and changing assertions of the current investigation into Russian “meddling” during the 2016 election. This easily read narrative by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, two veteran DC investigative reporters, brings order to the daily press revelations about interactions of Trump’s circle with Russian hucksters, oligarchs and friends of Vladimir Putin from 2013 through 2017.

Containing as many Russian names as Dostoyevsky’s novels, “Russian Roulette” explains the interest of the Obama administration and U.S. intelligence agencies and justifies Robert Mueller’s investigation of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian sabotage of the election.

Members of the Cannon Beach Library will gather for a presentation on “The State of the City” by City Manager Bruce St. Denis, a monthly business meeting, brunch and conversation, Wednesday, Sept. 5, at 10 a.m.

Manzanita author Holly Lorincz will discuss the world of collaborative writing and read from “The Everything Girl,” her latest novel, at the Northwest Authors Series, Saturday, Sept. 8, at 2 p.m.

Library members and volunteers are crafting handmade items and planning baked goods to sell at the library’s Fall Festival, Saturday, Sept. 29, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Additional crafters and bakers would be welcomed. Local shops have donated gift certificates valued at nearly $1500 for drawings, and five hotels have donated local stays for silent auction. Gift certificate tickets and bid sheets will be available at the library from Sept. 1 through 29. All proceeds support the library.

]]>A note to Cannon Beach City Governmenthttp://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/opinions/20180808/a-note-to-cannon-beach-city-government
http://www.dailyastorian.com/CBG/opinions/20180808/a-note-to-cannon-beach-city-government#CommentsWed, 8 Aug 2018 15:21:30 -0400 John Huismann Cannon Beach Gazettehttp://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809830In the more than 10 years that I have lived in Cannon Beach, it seems to me that the primary focus of our local government has been to improve the lot of our local merchants. They have advertised and helped to build (through the Chamber of Commerce and others) a variety of activities and festivals that draw tourists from all over the world. We, the folks who live in Cannon Beach, are now paying a pretty heavy price for their success.

During weekends and even some weekdays, it is very difficult to get around this town because of the traffic. Folks park all around our homes and sometimes even in our driveways. The parked cars have become so thick in midtown that it would be almost impossible to get a fire truck down some streets. Is this really the way that we want to live here in Cannon Beach? I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t.

So, what is the solution? It’s pretty obvious. We need to have a place to park cars for those who are day visitors. Along with that, we need to strictly enforce all parking laws and have a fleet of vans or small buses to provide transportation around town.

I realize that this is a radical suggestion. It ranks right up there with constructing a bypass for U.S. Highway 101. Does anyone remember? Highway 101 used to go right through our little town. Since the bypass was constructed, life has gotten much better here. Seaside missed a great opportunity to do the same a few years back.

It was a totally different idea to have traffic be able to bypass our little town. I’m sure that at the time there was plenty of concern on the part of the merchants. The net result for all of us was a much more livable town. Cannon Beach has certainly become more popular since then.

We have the responsibility of sharing our great natural beauty with the rest of the world. What we do not have to do is make this place unpleasant for the people who live here. Unfortunately, this has already happened. The question now is what are we going to do about it?

]]>Cannon Beach opposed to county lodging tax hike
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180808/cannon-beach-opposed-to-county-lodging-tax-hike
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180808/cannon-beach-opposed-to-county-lodging-tax-hike#CommentsWed, 8 Aug 2018 09:57:55 -0400Brenna Visser
http://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809834CANNON BEACH — City councilors voiced their opposition Tuesday to a Clatsop County lodging tax increase to help pay for jail operations, primarily taking issue with the lack of communication the county had with the city before the vote.

Monica Steele, the county’s budget and finance director, gave a presentation to the City Council about the new tax, which will impact lodging operators starting in January.

The county tax comes in anticipation of a $20 million bond measure in November to move the Clatsop County Jail from Astoria to the former North Coast Youth Correctional Facility in Warrenton. Annual jail operating costs — $3.4 million this year — are estimated to rise by more than $1.2 million if the jail is relocated.

But city councilors took issue with the fact the county did not approach the city or local lodging operators about the tax increase.

“They should have been talking to us and hotel management before this,” Mayor Sam Steidel said.

Cannon Beach joins dissenters in the lodging industry who have also been critical about not being included in discussions before the tax hike. Lodging operators also have argued the tax would dampen revenue and unfairly targets a single industry.

Proponents believe the 1 percent increase is relatively minimal and would mostly impact visitors from outside the county, who Sheriff Tom Bergin claims make up 27 percent of the inmate population.

City Councilor George Vetter said adding a county tax is another “bureaucratic burden” to hotels and rental companies, which already have to report separate taxes on the city and state level.

Others, like City Councilor Mike Benefield, took issue with the county handing the city restricted tourism promotion dollars it may not necessarily want.

By state law, only 30 percent of the new tax — about $420,000 of the $1.4 million estimated to be brought in annually — can be used for jail operations. The other 70 percent must be used for tourism promotion.

The tourism promotion portion of the revenue collected from businesses within city limits will be returned to cities to use how they see fit, Steele said. The new tax will raise the Cannon Beach lodging tax from 8 to 9 percent and is estimated to raise $380,000 in revenue a quarter for the city.

“I don’t want more promotion. I don’t want more advertising. You can take back (to the county commission) at least one councilor is not at all happy about this,” Benefield told Steele.

If the tax has to stay, Benefield suggested the county work with the state to broaden the definition of a tourism-related facility in state law so the money could support a variety of city functions.

“Have the county support that notion … then I wouldn’t be quite as opposed to you throwing money at us and telling us how to spend it,” he said.

Councilors did discuss a possible appeal of the county’s decision, but was advised against it by City Attorney Ashley Driscoll, who said appealing a tax the county has the right to implement would be “an uphill legal battle.”

Instead, the City Council agreed to send a letter to the county outlining concerns with the tax hike, including a request to repeal it regardless of whether the bond passes.

“We’re not appreciative of the way the (county) went about this,” Steidel said.

]]>Port of Astoria, Life Flight reach deal for new hangarhttp://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180808/port-of-astoria-life-flight-reach-deal-for-new-hangar
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180808/port-of-astoria-life-flight-reach-deal-for-new-hangar#CommentsWed, 8 Aug 2018 08:44:39 -0400Edward Stratton
http://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809838Life Flight Network will build a new $1 million hangar and crew quarters in its existing space at the Astoria Regional Airport after agreeing to a long-term lease with the Port of Astoria.

The Port Commission on Tuesday approved a 20-year lease with Life Flight, a helicopter medevac service that has been operating for more than three years out of a trailer and nearby rented hangar space. The lease includes four five-year extension options, locking in Life Flight for up to 40 years.

Life Flight’s new lease is expected to generate $19,000 a year for the Port. The service also accounts for 10 percent of jet fuel sales at the airport and will be obligated to buy it at $1.30 per gallon, earning the Port another $13,000 annually. Combined with the added revenue from freeing up the executive hangar Life Flight leases, the Port expects to make $32,000 annually from the agreement.

Since voters rejected a bond measure in May 2017 to fund Life Flight’s relocation, the Port has been negotiating with the service on a new spot. Life Flight received a $665,000 ConnectOregon state infrastructure grant that, along with its $285,000 match, will pay for the construction of the hangar.

The two sides settled on Life Flight’s existing location near the airport terminal building. The location was not the preferred site during the debate over the bond measure because of potential traffic and noise conflicts with nearby aviators, the Coast Guard’s Air Station Astoria and the Columbia River Bar Pilots.

Gary Kobes, the airport manager for the Port, said reaching a final solution meant the Port agreed to take on responsibility if there are any environmental issues that pop up during construction. So far, only light contamination on a small section of soil has been found, he said.

Jim Knight, the Port’s executive director, said the agency still needs to make several changes to nearby leases before finalizing the lease with Life Flight, such as moving a nearby storage area for Reser’s Fine Foods.

The Port Commission also voted Tuesday to accept a $300,000 grant from the Federal Aviation Administration that will pay the agency back for $266,220 it spent on 1.5 acres of wetland mitigation credits from Warrenton Fiber at the headwaters of the John Day River to offset the environmental impacts of a taxiway relocation.

]]>Entrepreneur plans data center in Warrenton http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180808/entrepreneur-plans-data-center-in-warrenton
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180808/entrepreneur-plans-data-center-in-warrenton#CommentsWed, 8 Aug 2018 07:15:32 -0400Edward Stratton
http://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809842WARRENTON — An internet entrepreneur wants to build a data center and technology incubator at the North Coast Business Park in Warrenton, a project that could help spark more diversity in the region’s economy.

Mark Cox, a former Astoria resident and CEO of Agile Design, will present the project to the Clatsop County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday night. The proposed campus, across from Costco on 19th Street, would include a nearly 100,000-square-foot data center, technology incubation space and other amenities, such as artificial ponds and a running track around the perimeter.

The data center would employ around 76 people, with an average wage of $75,000, Cox said. He hopes to open the center by the end of 2020.

County commissioners will consider whether to sell a 67-acre lot in the business park for the project. The business park has been slow to take off. Fort George Brewery in Astoria was the first company to show interest in the property when the brewery announced expansion plans in 2016.

Cox, who lives in Southern California, grew up in Astoria and graduated from Clatskanie High School. He earned a business degree at Clatsop Community College before transferring to the University of Oregon, where he earned dual degrees in marketing and finance. He founded a nationwide internet service provider called Global Frontiers Inc. in 1997 and a web-hosting company called Web Hosting Pros in 2004. Last year, he founded Agile Design to facilitate opening a new data center.

Cox was on a recent visit to the North Coast for the holidays when he realized what a good location it would be for the project. Data centers have been rapidly moving to the Pacific Northwest and other areas that offer less-expensive rates for power and water. The North Coast Business Park is also part of a state-approved enterprise zone that could provide a three- to five-year property tax break for new development, although nobody so far has taken advantage of the incentive.

Cox was also drawn by the North Coast’s proximity to undersea fiber-optic cables that help create the backbone of the global internet, he said. The Northwest Open Access Network, a fiber-optic cable operator created by public utility districts in Washington state, recently announced plans to extend a land line through Astoria and Warrenton, citing the interest of an undisclosed, large-scale new customer wanting a connection.

Many of the employees to start the North Coast Data and Technology Center would need to be hired from outside the region, Cox said, but he envisions a training program at the college helping supply future workers.

The property at the North Coast Business Park will meet his company’s needs for the next 20 years, he said. The business is poised to continue growing as more devices connect to the internet.

Jim Knight, executive director of the Port of Astoria, helped shepherd Cox’s proposal. He called it an amazing opportunity for the community and the Port.

“This will be a primary driver of a new form of enterprise in our community,” he said Tuesday during a Port Commission meeting. “We are entering the tech world.”

The plant will need a backup energy source, he said, which could end up being a woody biomass plant potentially located at the Port’s Airport Industrial Park. In addition, there is an opportunity for the Port to get into the business of managing fiber-optic cables, Knight said.

And while state officials say there’s no definitive data on the subject, anecdotal evidence suggests that state government is having similar problems.

“We are definitely seeing the same thing as the private sector.” said Steve Cox, workforce planning administrator at the Oregon Department of Corrections.

Using data reported by the state’s businesses, the Oregon Employment Department says about 64 percent of vacant positions in the private sector are “difficult to fill.”

About 30 percent of difficult-to-fill vacancies were hard to fill due to a lack of applicants. About 17 percent did not attract qualified applicants, and 14 percent were hard to fill, employers said, because of unfavorable working conditions.

State government had more than 5,800 job vacancies as of July 18, according to data provided by the state’s Department of Administrative Services.

For context, as of June, there were 40,285 paid state workers, including full-time, part-time, seasonal and temporary workers.

However, there are a number of circumstances that would cause a state job to remain vacant, says DAS spokeswoman Liz Craig.

Vacancies may mean that the agency is holding the position unfilled to save money, or that it’s recruiting for the position but haven’t hired yet. Alternatively, the position may be being re-classified, or another employee is doing some of the position’s work as a rotation or development assignment.

It may be more useful to look at open positions the state is actively recruiting for: as of July 18, the state had nearly 400 active job postings, and about 60 internal job openings, according to DAS.

Recruitment is top of mind for the Oregon Department of Corrections: the agency has created a recruiting team, increased its social media presence and held special one-day recruiting events in an effort to shepherd job applicants through the process more quickly.

“With Department of Corrections, we have 14 institutions in the state, and each of those is like a small little city, so we’re hiring everybody from administrative personnel to doctors, dentists and nurses,” Cox said Tuesday.

Cox says it’s hardest to fill openings for nurses, doctors and correctional officers, especially when the agency has to deal with negative public perceptions about working in corrections. It’s also competing against county-level law enforcement agencies and private sector employers, such as Amazon, which is opening several new centers in the state this year and plans to hire thousands of workers.

The Oregon Department of Transportation is also working to attract employees, setting up a specific ODOT jobs account on Twitter, sending postcards to recent graduates, attending job fairs and advertising online.

It’s hardest to fill positions for engineers, land surveyors and electricians, says Kevin Beckstrom, a public information officer for the department. He says it’s especially challenging to hire for licensed professions in the midst of a construction boom.

“We’re competing against other (departments of transportation), and against consultants, so it’s just difficult to grab that top talent,” Beckstrom said. He said that “compensation and location” are usually significant factors in causing applicants to choose other opportunities.

The Oregon Department of Human Services, meanwhile, has 91 positions posted for recruitment.

A spokeswoman for DHS, Christy Sinatra, says the majority of its vacant positions are in the Child Welfare and Self Sufficiency programs.

“The Oregon economy is doing very well right now and that can affect the size of the applicant pool,” Sinatra wrote in an email. “This can be especially true in rural areas of Oregon.”

In the coming years, there may be more openings in state government. About 35 percent of current state employees are eligible to retire, according to DAS.

In anticipation of this change, DAS has set up a succession planning guide for state agency managers, which includes ways to help agencies identify critical positions and competencies.

But right now, Craig, the DAS spokeswoman, says, the number of vacancies due to retirements is still smaller than the number of vacancies due to people leaving a position for other reasons, whether for another job in the agency or leaving state government altogether, by a 12-to-1 ratio.

The new tax, which will take effect in January, will generate an estimated $1.4 million annually in revenue for the county and cities. By state law, 70 percent must be spent on tourism promotion, while 30 percent — an estimated $420,000 — can be used for jail operations. The county already imposes a 9.5 percent lodging tax in unincorporated areas, in addition to state and city taxes. The new tax will apply within and outside city limits.

The tax comes in advance of a $20 million bond measure in November to move the Clatsop County Jail from Astoria to the former North Coast Youth Correctional Facility in Warrenton.

The vote to impose the tax was 3-1. Scott Lee, the commission chairman, and Commissioners Sarah Nebeker and Lisa Clement voted yes, while Commissioner Lianne Thompson was the lone “no” vote. Commissioner Kathleen Sullivan, who works for the Cannery Pier Hotel, recused herself.

Sheriff Tom Bergin has argued that the tax is justified because an estimated 27 percent of jail inmates come from outside the county. During testimony Wednesday, he referenced several high-profile crimes that have involved hotel guests.

“I’ve taken multiple meth labs out of hotels in Gearhart, Seaside, Cannon Beach and Astoria,” he said.

Bergin argued that the tax is necessary regardless of whether the jail bond passes, because the county has a need to rent jail beds. He estimated between $800,000 and $1 million a year to rent 30 additional jail beds.

The sheriff thinks the lodging tax is a good option to augment the budget.

“Minimally, this is not affecting their bottom line,” Bergin said of the lodging industry. “I’ve talked to some other individuals who are more on board, and they’re more concerned about how that money is going to be transferred to the cities. That’s not really my fight.”

Lodging and tourism leaders, filling much of the meeting room at the Judge Guy Boyington Building on Wednesday, vociferously disagreed with Bergin, arguing the tax would dampen revenue and unfairly targets a single industry that doesn’t capture all visitors. They called on the county to hold off on the tax until after the November bond measure and continue a dialogue with the lodging industry about alternatives.

David Reid, director of the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce, said tourism is a $500 million industry in Clatsop County and cautioned against vilifying guests.

“You cannot simply take $1.4 million from guests and expect them to book quite as many hotel rooms, spend quite as much money on meals, visit quite as many attractions and have as much money left to spend at retailers,” he said. “Their money can only stretch so far.”

Jason Brandt, CEO of the Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association, said lodging taxes suppress the ability to attract tourists. He called it irresponsible for the county to pass a lodging tax meant to support tourism without any industry support.

The lodging association sued Bend over the city’s use of tourism tax money for road repairs. A judge sided with the association, but the city has appealed the decision.

Loretta Maxwell, owner of the Grandview Bed & Breakfast, questioned how many of the out-of-town jail inmates referenced by Bergin stay in rented rooms, calling for an analysis.

“I think that you’re flogging a dead horse,” Maxwell said of taxes on the lodging industry. “Our percentages are getting close to the big cities like Los Angeles and New York, and we’re not them.”

The argument of waiting until after the November vote on the jail bond was compelling to Thompson, who said the county should continue the conversation about alternatives and look at taxing other segments of the tourism industry, such as food and beverages, in order to capture the impact of visitors not renting rooms.

County Manager Cameron Moore said the commission could reconsider after the vote because the tax will not take effect until January.

“It gives you the option to rethink this if the jail bond is unsuccessful,” he said.

]]>Oregon has pot oversupply, Colorado hits the mark
http://www.dailyastorian.com/SS/news/20180807/oregon-has-pot-oversupply-colorado-hits-the-mark
http://www.dailyastorian.com/SS/news/20180807/oregon-has-pot-oversupply-colorado-hits-the-mark#CommentsTue, 7 Aug 2018 09:15:08 -0400 Gillian Flaccus and Kathleen Foody Presshttp://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809858PORTLAND — Two of the first states to broadly legalize marijuana took different approaches to regulation that left Oregon with a vast oversupply and Colorado with a well-balanced market. But in both states prices for bud have plummeted.

A new Oregon report by law enforcement found nearly 70 percent of the legal recreational marijuana grown goes unsold, while an unrelated state-commissioned Colorado study found most growers there are planting less than half of their legal allotment — and still meeting demand.

The reports offer case studies for California and other pot-friendly states as they ramp up their legal pot industries. They also underscore some key differences in how broad legalization was handled that have helped shape differently evolving markets in each state.

The Oregon study released by the Oregon-Idaho High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area — a coalition of local, state and federal agencies — includes the medical and general-use markets and the illegal market, despite gaps in data on illicit marijuana grows.

It noted Oregon still has a serious problem with out-of-state trafficking and black market grows — and the top federal law enforcement officer in Oregon demanded more cooperation from state and local officials Thursday in a strident statement.

“What is often lost in this discussion is the link between marijuana and serious, interstate criminal activity. Overproduction is rampant, and the illegal transport of product out-of-state — a violation of both state and federal law — continues unchecked,” said Billy Williams, U.S. attorney for Oregon. “It’s time for the state to wake up, slow down and address these issues in a responsible and thoughtful manner.”

The Colorado study, released Thursday, focuses on the legal, general-use market, and researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s business school and a Denver consulting firm had access to state tracking data to produce the first-of-its-kind analysis.

Colorado sales of broadly legalized marijuana began in 2014, roughly two years before Oregon allowed marijuana to be sold at non-medical retail stores. From the beginning, Colorado had stricter regulations for its growers than Oregon did.

Colorado gave existing medical marijuana growers the right of first refusal for licenses, cutting down right away on a potential source of black market production. The state also requires growers to show they have sold 85 percent of their output before allowing them to expand their growing operation, said Beau Whitney, senior economist at national cannabis analytics firm New Frontier Data.

“That was the right approach, and we’ve made that recommendation to other state regulators to do that because if you exclude the medical folks from entering the market, then there could be propensity for diversion” to the black market, he said.

“Colorado has done a good job in sizing the market. In Oregon, it’s going to take a while for that balance to be established.”

Oregon didn’t give existing medical marijuana growers priority over new applicants as Colorado did, and it also didn’t cap licenses. That created a perfect storm of endless licenses for all comers paired with less incentive for medical growers to enter the new industry.

In June, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which oversees general-use marijuana, did put a pause on issuing new grow licenses to work through a monthslong backlog of applicants. The Legislature will likely consider steps to get a handle on oversupply in the 2019 session.

The Pacific Northwest state also had to contend with a long-entrenched culture of illegal marijuana cultivation along its border with California, where there are near-perfect outdoor growing conditions. That tradition of illicit marijuana has created a nightmare for law enforcement agencies in rural, heavily forested counties already stretched thin by budget cuts.

The Oregon report, for example, noted nearly 15,000 pounds of marijuana with a street value of $48 million has been seized heading to 37 other states. That doesn’t include illegal pot snagged at Portland International Airport.

“I know a lot of the legal industry in Oregon has been asking for stepped-up enforcement to combat illegal operations, but there doesn’t appear in those conversations a clear owner of the law enforcement,” Whitney said.

Although Colorado has been more successful in finding a balance between supply and demand, retail prices for bud, or marijuana flower, have plummeted in both states about 50 percent since 2015.

That statistic could be deceiving, however, because most growers are now cultivating their crop for conversion into the increasingly popular oil extracts that wind up in everything from soaps to vape pens to edible gummies to salves. It takes 10 times more dried flower to make an oil extract and much of the dried flower is going to that market, Whitney said.

“What the report demonstrates to us is that our licensed operators are operating responsibly,” said Mike Hartman, executive director of the Department of Revenue, which oversees marijuana regulation. “They’re not overproducing the amount of product they’re putting in the marketplace. They are operating to maximize product but also … emphasizing public health and safety.”

At Green Dot Labs in Boulder, CEO Alana Malone estimated the company grows about 1,600 of its allotted 1,800 plants that are used to produce cannabis oil products.

As one of Colorado’s oldest companies focused on producing extracts from marijuana plants, Malone said decisions about how much to plant are based on expected demand — and consumers’ interest in the type of concentrate products that Green Dot Labs produces is growing.

Malone said she was pleased that the Colorado study found about 32 metric tons of marijuana flower left in inventory by the end of 2017.

“That’s not even close to some of the figures you see from others states,” Malone said. “So I’m a little bit proud of that.”

]]>Warrenton toddler injured after being hit by car
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180806/warrenton-toddler-injured-after-being-hit-by-car
http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20180806/warrenton-toddler-injured-after-being-hit-by-car#CommentsMon, 6 Aug 2018 09:30:45 -0400The http://www.dailyastorian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2018180809887A Warrenton toddler sustained serious injuries on Saturday after being hit by a car backing out of a driveway.

The red Volkswagen Jetta was backing out of a driveway just after 2 p.m. on the 90500 block of U.S. Highway 101. Behind the car was a 2-year-old boy in a Radio Flyer red wagon.

The car made contact with the wagon, causing serious injuries to the boy. He was taken to Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria and then flown to Randall Children’s Hospital in Portland.